Nike Accelerator Spotlight: Coachbase lets you draw up plays, strategies with an iPad

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A youth basketball coach from Iowa uses CoachBase to draw up a play.

Editor’s note:Nike Accelerator Spotlight takes a look at the ten startups participating in the Nike+ Accelerator, a three-month startup program based in Portland, Ore. and put on by Nike and TechStars. GeekWire is featuring each company leading up to the June 10 demo day.

Toss out those felt pens and washable clipboards — Coachbase is making it easy for coaches to strategize and diagram their winning formulas with a PC, smartphone or tablet.

The Nike Accelerator startup has a platform that allows coaches to draw and animate plays and drills for more than 20 sports and then share them instantly with the rest of the team via email, social media or the cloud.

Founder Keith Rumjahn originally created Coachbase to solve problems he was having as a recreational coach in Canada. But once he put it out in the App Store and started receiving positive feedback, he realized the potential of the idea and quit his job at CaseWare. Rumjahn returned to Hong Kong, where he’s hired a team eight to help with Coachbase, which currently offers three different pricing tiers.

Read on to find out more about the startup and how it could shake up play-calling for coaches.

Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: Coachbase replaces the physical coach’s clipboard and allows coach’s to animate their plays and strategies in a clear manner that also supports animation. Coaches can then send the plays they made via cloudsync and email to their players who can then review it at home on their desktop. Plays and drills can also be downloaded from our database and coaches can use them to plan their practice.

Inspiration hit us when: As former coaches ourselves (used to coach youth teams) we realized that we could never find a simple solution to solve our needs. The two main concerns we had to address as a coach was WHAT we wanted to deliver and HOW to deliver it. We leveraged the power of mobile technology to create a solution that addresses those problems.

Our “secret sauce” is: A very powerful programming team in Asia supported by an experienced coaching advisory board. We are all very passionate about sports and are driven to solve the pain points we face as on the court.

How do you plan on using the Nike+ platform and NikeFuel?: Our vision is to get athletes to track their Fuel during practices and use that make it fun, social and motivating for all sports. It will also allow parents, players and coaches to measure progress over time.

CoachBase founder Keith Rumjahn.

Who will use your product?: All coaches! We currently have users across the globe, over 16 sports, ranging from recreational leagues to national teams.

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: We greatly underestimated the market in the USA. Growing up in Hong Kong, we all knew that the majority of our customers would be in the West. We were still unprepared for the passion and involvement everyone here has with sports!

The smartest move we’ve made so far: Coming to the Nike+ Accelerator and getting access to a wealth of mentors from TechStars who believe in paying it forward.

Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner?: Jobs! One of the most successful modern entrepreneurs, he created the platform that allowed us to provide this solution to the world!

Would you rather have Michael Jordan, Muhammed Ali or Tiger Woods in your corner: Muhammed Ali, he’s a fighter that never let anything come between him and success!

Rivals should fear us because: We execute amazingly fast, are available on all platforms and have the most user friendly and visually appeasing products.

We are truly unique because: We are a very young and international team, we have tapped into a great pool of talent in the East and now want to dominate the market in the West.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: Be ready to pivot. The idea you have right now be the one you end up with, go to every meeting with an open mind.

Inside the Nike+ Accelerator office in Portland.

The greatest tech-related invention in sports is: Utilizing social media platforms to share and compete personal exercise data. Suddenly, you’re able to tap in to a whole network of like-minded and active individuals who believe in the same healthy values as you do.

Our favorite sports-related app/platform right now is: Nike Fuel. Liking the aggregated data on the leaderboard throughout the week!

Your first impressions of Portland are: Our team loves the outdoors! We’ve visited the waterfalls, been hiking, exploring all corners of Portland on bikes, lay out at the Coast and we’re looking forward to whitewater rafting this weekend.

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Taylor Soper is a GeekWire staff reporter who covers a wide variety of tech assignments, including emerging startups in Seattle and Portland, the sharing economy and the intersection of technology and sports. Follow him @taylor_soper and email taylor@geekwire.com.